The Daily Vizhttp://thedailyviz.com
A (semi-retired) digital sketchpad for data stories, by Matt Stiles.Wed, 02 Jan 2019 08:06:07 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.934988694Visualizing a Year of @realDonaldTrumphttp://thedailyviz.com/2019/01/01/visualizing-a-year-of-realdonaldtrump/
http://thedailyviz.com/2019/01/01/visualizing-a-year-of-realdonaldtrump/#respondTue, 01 Jan 2019 03:28:25 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3697President Trump thumbedhisway through another year in the White House on Twitter, compiling a good (great) collection of 2,930 touts, complaints, defenses and rants.

Notice how the #maga hashtag, a political rallying cry, disappears after the midterm elections. He talks about The Wall and shutdowns in and around the shutdowns, of course. And he decries Special Counsel Robert Mueller most often around the times his former aides have appeared (and been convicted or pleaded guilty) in federal court.

These examples are obvious when plotted on a timeline with annotation:

Through it all, the president’s audience of followers grew steadily by 10 million users. He now has 56.7 million followers (me included). He’s No. 15 on that measure, according to friendorfollow.com, sandwiched between heavy hitters like @selenagomez and @britneyspears!

During 2018, @realDonaldTrump spread his tweets throughout the days of the week, with the president even finding time on the weekends to sound off:

This large collection of messages, scraped using twint, drew more than 300 million of engagements, with “likes” being most common by far. This one about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a year ago received a whopping 475,000 likes, topping the list.

]]>http://thedailyviz.com/2019/01/01/visualizing-a-year-of-realdonaldtrump/feed/03697Charting the Korean War’s Missing Troopshttp://thedailyviz.com/2018/07/18/visualizing-the-korean-wars-missing-troops/
http://thedailyviz.com/2018/07/18/visualizing-the-korean-wars-missing-troops/#respondWed, 18 Jul 2018 00:26:43 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3663I wrote recently about the effort to get North Korea to return some of the remains of United States troops who are still unaccounted for since the Korean War.

More than 7,000 troops — almost all presumed dead — never came home after the conflict, which ended with an armistice in 1953. There’s new hope that recent diplomacy between the United States and North Korea might allow some of those remains to come home.

My friend Bob Rudisgraciously helped me free the data from its original PDF format (though the agency later released a spreadsheet in response to my requests). BTW: Bob did an excellent job documenting his process for cleaning the data and creating a chart.

I had to give some visualizations a try, too.

More than 30,000 United States troops died in the war, a brutal conflict dramatically changed by the involvement of Chinese forces after an initially strong advance into the North by the Americans early in the fighting.

Many of those who never came home were pilots, like one I profiled recently, or ground troops engaged in tough fighting at places like the Chosin Reservoir.

Here’s the timeline for when these “unaccounted for” troops were lost over the course of the war (the winter 1950 spikes represent the Chinese counterattack and the Chosin Reservoir battle):

Here are the days of the week in which those losses occurred. This could be random chance, but some 300 troops were reported lost on Dec. 2, 1950, as especially fierce fighting with the Chinese erupted during a battle around Yudam-ni. It was a Thursday:

Most of those lost were, of course, from the U.S. Army, which endured heavy casualties. The soldiers’ fates were made more perilous by the freezing weather conditions:

The most populous states, as you’d expect, lost the most troops. Those still missing came from all over the United States, though, and this map shows the rate of loss per 10,000 population (as of 1950). States such Alaska, Nevada and some in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic experienced a disproportionate loss.

You can get the data here and, again, check out Bob Rudis’ own documentation showing how the data were converted from PDF and visualized using R.

]]>http://thedailyviz.com/2018/07/18/visualizing-the-korean-wars-missing-troops/feed/03663Charting the GOP’s Congressional Exodushttp://thedailyviz.com/2018/04/12/charting-the-gops-congressional-exodus/
http://thedailyviz.com/2018/04/12/charting-the-gops-congressional-exodus/#respondWed, 11 Apr 2018 23:08:04 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3649Another Republican in the U.S. House — Speaker Paul Ryan, no less — announced his intention not to seek re-election in 2018, adding to the number of members leaving ahead of what’s expected to be an unfavorable mid-term environment for the party.

Even before Ryan’s announcement, HuffPost reported that the number of GOP congressmen leaving the chamber, either for retirement or other offices, has hit numbers not seen in decades. His exit is likely to increase that number soon.

This chart shows how the GOP members’ announcements over this cycle have cumulative outpaced their Democratic counterparts:

And here’s a breakdown of retirements, by party, over the years:

]]>http://thedailyviz.com/2018/04/12/charting-the-gops-congressional-exodus/feed/03649China’s Imbalanced Trade with the United States, in Four Chartshttp://thedailyviz.com/2018/04/08/chinas-imbalanced-trade-with-the-united-states-in-four-charts/
http://thedailyviz.com/2018/04/08/chinas-imbalanced-trade-with-the-united-states-in-four-charts/#respondSat, 07 Apr 2018 23:16:20 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3635A trade war could be looming between the United States and China, fueled by President Trump’s fixation on the two nations’ unbalanced import-export relationship.

That’s largely driven by macroeconomic factors, not some malicious intent: China is a low-cost manufacturing powerhouse, and the United States is an economy dominated by domestic consumption.

These charts help explain the $570 billion overall trade relationship between world’s largest economies.

First, here’s how the trade has changed over time. The United States imported $460 billion in goods from China last year. That figure has steadily increased in recent decades as China emerged as Asia’s top manufacturer. Exports from the United States to China, which doesn’t yet have the same per-capita domestic consumption as America, haven’t kept pace (again, not that we should be worried).

Here’s the same data, told with a column chart. It shows trade between the two countries in proportion. About 20% of our trade with China last year, and over recent years, has been from exports. Imports represent about 80% of our goods exchanges, on the other hand.

The resulting balance of trade, or trade deficit in this case, has also grown steadily over the years. These charts show the change, year by year, since 1998. Red bars represent the growing trade deficit in billions of dollars by month.

This measure — the trade balance — varies widely by country. One way to examine the relationship with other countries is to look at the balance in the context of the respective total trade. How much does the balance represent as a percentage of overall transactions, for example?

These charts show that figure for America’s top-40 trading partners in 2008. Blue bars reflect a positive trade balance for the United States. Red bars mean it suffered a trade deficit with a particular country in a given year.

When examined this way, you can see that China isn’t the only country in the world to sell more to Americans than it buys. China’s deficit might be huge — its population and output is quite large — but the trade deficit looks similar to other countries figures when viewed proportionally.

]]>http://thedailyviz.com/2018/04/08/chinas-imbalanced-trade-with-the-united-states-in-four-charts/feed/03635Chart: Republican Attacks on the FBI Have Worked, Especially on Republicanshttp://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/19/chart-republican-attacks-on-the-fbi-have-worked-especially-on-republicans/
http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/19/chart-republican-attacks-on-the-fbi-have-worked-especially-on-republicans/#respondMon, 19 Mar 2018 02:13:02 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3624HuffPost is out with an interesting poll about the the public’s trust in the FBI, which has been under attack recently for its role in the investigations of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Trump and his supporters have been particularly tough on the bureau, and it shows in the polling data.

A slim 51 percent majority of the public say they have at least a fair amount of trust in the FBI, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, down 12 points since 2015. Most of that change comes from Republicans and independents, among whom the percentage saying they trust the agency dropped by 22 points and 15 points, respectively. Allies of the White House have spent much of January ramping up their attacks against the FBI’s Russia investigation.

]]>http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/19/chart-republican-attacks-on-the-fbi-have-worked-especially-on-republicans/feed/03624Visualizing #NICAR18, Part IIhttp://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/13/visualizing-nicar-conference/
http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/13/visualizing-nicar-conference/#respondTue, 13 Mar 2018 02:52:12 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3606I posted recently about the NICAR journalism conference, held this year in Chicago — and it turns out news nerds like to tweet.

To keep track of all the conference chatter, I dumped each mention of the #NICAR18 hashtag using Python, eventually collecting some 4,100 tweets.

Next, I created a histogram with average #nicar18 tweet counts by hour for the three full days: Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It shows when people sent the most tweets — and that they apparently took more breaks during lunch and just before the first afternoon sessions began.

The pattern is also clear here in a more granular view of daily tweet counts by hour:

This tweet volume, which only captures people tweeting with the hashtag, was posted by attendees from across the globe. This year’s conference, as I mentioned in the previous post, had record-breaking attendance: more than 1,200.

Here’s where the attendees came from:

These types of maps are imperfect, of course, especially on mobile. For one, it’s tough to decipher attendance from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

Here’s a more focused version (still a little nuclear blasty), if that helps (please note that the scale is different from the map above):

See you next year, NICARians!

]]>http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/13/visualizing-nicar-conference/feed/03606Visualizing the News Nerd Conference Known as #NICAR18http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/09/visualizing-the-news-nerd-conference-known-as-nicar18/
http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/09/visualizing-the-news-nerd-conference-known-as-nicar18/#respondFri, 09 Mar 2018 13:05:21 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3590I’m in the United States this week to attend the annual news nerd conference known as NICAR, a diverse gathering of reporters, editors and developers (and others) focused on storytelling with data.

I look forward to it like Christmas.

I get to return to the United States, see old friends, learn new skills and drink Diet Coke, which is nearly impossible to find in South Korea, where I work as a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

These basic graphics help explain the event, held this year in Chicago.

First, there’s record-breaking attendance* this year:

The event has more than 200 sessions over five days, from the basic use of spreadsheets in news gathering to the construction of complex news applications — and the organizers (who graciously share data about the conference) categorized them by type:

The conference generally has a mix of skills sets and expertise levels, which is evident in the session categories:

There are people here from almost every American state and from numerous countries around the world. My jet lag brain is still working through how to best visualize that, perhaps in a map. I’ll post something soon.

]]>http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/09/visualizing-the-news-nerd-conference-known-as-nicar18/feed/03590Jobless Claims at Five-Decade Lowhttp://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/02/jobless-claims-at-five-decade-low/
http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/02/jobless-claims-at-five-decade-low/#respondFri, 02 Mar 2018 05:17:48 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3576The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits hasn’t been this low since Richard Nixon was president, according to new data from the U.S. Labor Department.

The figures suggest a tight labor market in which employers are retaining employees because there aren’t as many available qualified workers, Bloomberg reported:

Overall, the employment picture remains solid, with payrolls continuing to increase and the unemployment rate at the lowest since late 2000. Job growth will help sustain consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy.

Here’s a remix of Bloomberg’s chart, which game me an excuse to finally deploy something with “swoopy” annotation (thanks, Adam!):

]]>http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/02/jobless-claims-at-five-decade-low/feed/03576How China’s Economic Retaliation Hurt the South Korean Tourism Industryhttp://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/02/how-chinas-economic-retaliation-hurt-the-south-korean-tourism-industry/
http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/02/how-chinas-economic-retaliation-hurt-the-south-korean-tourism-industry/#respondThu, 01 Mar 2018 20:51:12 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3567I wrote this week about the one-year anniversary of China’s economic retaliation against South Korea over the THAAD missile system, a defensive weapon designed to stop North Korea’s medium-range missiles.

China objects to it and has been flexing its economic muscle in protest, carrying out an aggressive campaign of economic retaliation that includes sending fewer tourists. In 2017, just over 4 million Chinese visited South Korea, down from roughly 8 million a year earlier after several years of steady growth.

These charts show the effect on the South Korean tourism industry, which has grown to depend heavily on China. This first example helps show China’s increasing share among all tourists who visit South Korea. In 2016, for example, nearly half of all visitors were Chinese — way up from a decade ago:

This chart reflects the annual total visitors by Chinese since 2000. Until last year, annual growth had average nearly 30%, even with the 2015 MERS outbreak in South Korea, which caused hundreds of thousands — likely millions — of Chinese to stay away. You can see how the figure dropped dramatically in 2017:

And, finally, we look at the monthly data, which spikes during peak summer months. The effect of MERS is again evident, as is the significant drop in tourists after the Chinese implemented travel restrictions last March:

]]>http://thedailyviz.com/2018/03/02/how-chinas-economic-retaliation-hurt-the-south-korean-tourism-industry/feed/03567Tracking Historical Twitter Followers: @elisewho vs. @stileshttp://thedailyviz.com/2018/02/13/tracking-twitter-followers-elisewho-stiles/
http://thedailyviz.com/2018/02/13/tracking-twitter-followers-elisewho-stiles/#respondTue, 13 Feb 2018 01:20:29 +0000http://thedailyviz.com/?p=3543My wife (@elisewho) and I (@stiles) had a silly social media moment yesterday when I replied to one of her tweets — despite the fact that she was sitting in an adjacent room of our Seoul apartment.